I'll do my best.
To my advantage, I've subtitled (for my girlfriend) "Fantozzi 2", an Italian comedy film which didn't exist subtitled in English (while the first did)... that job was way harder than THX could ever be ;-)
I've got a DVD with the original cut that probably someone around here made a long time ago, I downloaded it through a link from IMDb forum around 2005. I also have the original film in AVI, I'll check if the sutbitles match, otherwise I will ask you the avi file.
I will adapt from Italian to English then, at least in those parts that differ consistently. I agree with all that you said.
Ah Svenska! Then our watches should read the same time. Tack för allt
(that's the end of my knowledge of Swedish sorry! lol)
Got your file myscamore, I will work on that, shouldn't take too long. Maybe we misunderstood each other while we were proposing the same thing. Work on your srt file will take no much time.
As for the Italian dubbing liberties, are you all sure you want those translated? They were afterall "liberties" taken by the translators (as they often do here), not direct orders from Warner.
We have other infamous translation liberties, one big example is from Star Wars ep IV when the "clone wars" Obi Wan refers to were translated with "Guerre dei Quoti" ("Quoti Wars", where Quoti doesn't mean anything at all, they just decided to invent a word!). In 2000s it became obvious when Lucas made "The Clone Wars" into one if his prequels.
When I select Italian subtitles on Star Wars IV, in that scene they correctly wrote "Clone Wars" even if in the dubbed audio track they say "Quoti Wars".
So my question is, do you really want to keep the Italian liberties that the dubbers took when translating THX and make them into the English subtitle or should we stick to the original subtitles no matter what the audio in Italian says.
I rest my case to you, whatever you decide if perfectly fine for me. I like the robot casually saying that the employees were going to be destroyed because oudated! lol
As for the time when we could chat one day, if I'm not mistaken noon in the pacific corresponds to 9pm here in Italy. SilverWook if you are ever free in late morning or early afternoon that would be just fine for me.
msycamore where do you live?
What time zone are you in guys? I'm on GMT+1
msycamore said:
the DVD is to no use for us as they are for the "Director's Cut" with its many dialogue differences, that's why I've made a new English sub-stream for the restored original cut in the first place. At first I had planned to just fill in the blanks with the few audio differences you and SilverWook had pointed out, but when I found out that they had taken such liberties in the dubbing, it altered that plan. So, I'll need your help if I'm gonna do this.
Still, I can use most of the dialogues from the DVD, being careful with the re-edited parts and adding the extended parts (which we already translated). It makes the difference for me between accomplishing it in a month instead of four. I study medicine and I cannot dedicate a lot of time to re-translate an entire film from zero.
SilverWook said:
It would be very interesting if an Italian LD exists. The LDDB only has listings for the two discs I own, plus the Letterboxed PAL and Japanese full frame release from the '80s.
I just got confirmation, it exists. I contacted a guy that was selling dozens of Italian Laserdiscs asking if he had THX, he said he did but sold it already years ago (damn!). So there is a slight chance to find it... a day.
I suggest to keep on ebay a search active for "L'uomo che fuggì dal futuro", you never know what might show up a day!
I think we should all meet on a chat (does the website have one?) one of these days to deline together a few choices, decide what's best to do. Hard to plan through posts on the forum. However, I want to wait till I find at least the VHS, so I can give you some substantial updates.
A dear friend of mine from Germany is going to search and check the German VHS of THX. If it's the same of the Italian then we can call it a "European Cut" (or something similar) and perhaps release it on Disc 2 as a multilanguage DVD (with English subtitles). Anyway we will see where my searches lead me!
In the meantime I can already start working on subtitling the Italian film in English. Is a .srt file ok?
msycamore said:
erri_wan, could you perhaps compare my English subtitle stream for the restored original cut with your Italian audio, and make corrections where the Italian dubbers was a little creative? It could be a little tiresome for you if they changed many lines instead of just translating them, but it's the only way if we want a true translation of the Italian audio instead of the original lines. Let me know, and I'll send the file to you.
And also let me know if this is actually how you all want it, we could go both ways in the subtitling.
haha, you raised a very interesting problem. Wether to keep the slightly creative translation or dump it?
ALL things considered, I would say we dump the creative translations and be faithful to the original English script.
This also means less work for me because if you want a "correct" translation then we can simply take the Italian subtitles from the DVD because (wait till you hear this) the subtitles on Italian DVDs are proper translation of the English language and not a transcription of the Italian dubbing (this means that in DVDs we've got Italian language that does not match exactly the Italian subtitles).
msycamore and silverwook, can you tell me how do you want to organize this DVD? Where does the Italian extra scenes fit? Do you want to insert SEN extended scene into the movie and subtitle it or leave it as an extra? What about the different prologue? I can guess it will be an extra too?
Knowing that this was an International release never dubbed in English, unfortunately we have no chance of making a "European Cut" DVD, not in English anyway. That's a shame, I would have liked a multilanguage release of this extended cut.
UPDATES:
The library I contacted said they cannot lend the tape but I can watch it there. Problem is, it's very far from where I live. I'm talking 4 hours by car. I asked if they could check the beginning for me, I'm waiting for their reply.
A guy on a forum is selling the tape in Italian, I contacted him too but I haven't heard from him yet.
I'm also looking for Italian Laserdisc release... now, THIS is a rare thing, considering that LD never sold much over here, the probability of finding one is slim (don't even know if it was ever released, there is no official title list).
Sorry if my updates are somewhat... inconsistent. Hopefully some good news next week.
Ever seen this one?
Maybe some other smart operator thought it was just a commercial and cut it away lol
We will definitely add more info to wikipedia once this adventure is finished
SilverWook said:
Then I saw the mother of all bad pan and scan decisions in known home video history...The final scene of THX on the surface is not squeezed, letterboxed, nor does it pan over to show the final credits. It stays parked on the left side of the frame for the duration. You never see the credits! Did the telecine operator pass out in a drunken stupor by this point? Or did he simply leave the room to take a leak? We will probably never know! :P
LOL and again LOL!
Ah come on!
At this point I think we can already outline a list of different version (including the pan scan monstruosities) which seems to be almost at level with the original Star Wars. In the meantime I'm trying to retrieve from different sources a Warner Video THX in Italian. I'll keep you updated.
SilverWook said:
I'm also intrigued that this Ebay seller mentions the Italian THX poster as being from 1976.
http://cgi.ebay.com/THX-1138-Italian-1p-76-George-Lucas-different-art-/350420271912?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5196ad0328
The IMDB has no info on when the movie opened in Italy though.
This finally dates the Italian release, which I even doubted it even happened!
You mean this picture? http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/1658/vlcsnap2010082520h32m09.png
I see it also on this new video. So yes, it's the same master
I'm starting to get confused and lost with all these versions.
We've got:
1) a theatrical release the shortest existing that no one has ever seen but at the cinema (am I right?)
2) the original cut (longer) that was made into laserdisc and VHS.
3) an Italian (possibly European) release with a flashback sequence inserted at the beginning and an extended scene (SEN and the kids). Where does this extended scene fit into the story? Now that we have agreed this was perhaps an International cut made by Warner the question is, has this extended scene ever been seen by Americans?
The plot thickens... (no, not really)
the version this guy has sent me is higher quality because it's from an English THX-1138 (laserdisc maybe?).
Length is 81m36s
The beginning is in English and at some point it cuts into Italian (exactly after the off-screen narrator speech). This shows that someone took the audio (from the italian version that I have) and inserted it into a good-quality English video. This means there are no extended scenes, no "original" off-screen narration about Adam and no translated screens.
So this is basically the American laserdisc version with the Italian audio being re-cut to fit its shorter length (to further confirm this, some small portions of the audio are missing here and there, in these segments the audio switches back to English for a few seconds). This was quite common some years ago (at the time of emule and WinMX) when Italians ripped the audio from their sources and substituted it onto a good quality video source... so making a quick and good quality release
It is an assumption but, until anything prooves differently, there is no reason to doubt that they weren't dubbed. American films subtitled are very very rare in Germany and France (next to none really), in Italy totally unheard of.
Films that you may find subtitled are some niche films from East Europe or Russia, but as long as it's American or European you may find the most unknown stuff dubbed for us, such as (off the top of my mind):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108371/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101831/
SilverWook said:
It also appears to be anamorphic, or does Youtube resize images to 16:9 on the fly now?
Don't think so, I have high hopes for this version. I can't wait
I tried to look for old reviews and for some reason I stumbled upon the New York Magazine ( http://www.google.com/search?q=thx-1138&hl=it&safe=off&tbs=bks:1,bkms:1168684103302643781&ei=xJD6TP7RGIqZOr6b7NQK&start=20&sa=N ) which wasn't too kind on it. However I found a later issue (1987) that describe THX as 1h28min long, so 88 minutes. Isn't that 2 mins longer than the original cut?
zombie84 said:
It's not said whether the German version was dubbed or subtitled; if it was subtitled, it's no wonder the 1978 cut was ported, since it required extremely little work, unlike dubbing.
Germans dub films, just like Italians and French (probably Spanish too, I've never been to spain, couldn't say for sure)
By the way the Italian guy on youtube said he can arrange to send me the file. He downloaded it from emule a long time ago. I hope to hear from him soon again. If the Italian version always had the flashback sequence then we might have in our hand a much higher quality version of the one I sent to SilverWook with no "pan-scan adaptations"! (whatever they are called)
Is it just me or this is all really exciting?
One thing that always cracked me up is how the scene from 6.21 where a robot is showing some citizens around has been changed to a darker tone with the italian dubbing.
In English the robot is just showing around and he seems even pleasant. The group of white-dressed citizens seem to be tourists (considering that one has a camera)
In Italian, the robot, with a much less gentle voice, is saying that this is their new working area they have been "programmed" for (so making it as if the "tourists" are new comers for the job) and that the current personnel will be destroyed because outdated (this said very matter-of-factly). The workers don't seem to take notice of such a grave announcement (and that's because in English they are not threatened with an incoming destruction for being "outdated").
Italian dubbers must have had a different and even more dark and depressing idea on how Lucas' dystopia should be like haha. Machines saying that people are outdated and to be replaced/destroyed.
msycamore said:
EDIT: does this clip which is from a pre-'04 version have the same Italian dubbing as your TV-version, erri_wan?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxq_lx1Fdwo
I'm going to check if I can find some torrent for L'uomo che fuggì dal futuro (THX 1138), probably just DVD-versions out there, but you never know.
Dubbing is the same yes, it's the old version which I see it's in higher quality than mine and, if you notice, the count of officers (at 8'41") has not been re-edited for letterbox like in my version. I'll enquiry at once about the origin.
Unfortunately I cannot say if it's the same cut because it's just after SEN chatting with the kids. I'll ask the owner how's the beginning and if he could send a copy!
msycamore said:
I'm beginning to believe that your version could be just the regular Italian version that was available on video until the cgi version came along,
That's what I'm trying to verify but it has become darn hard to find VHS anymore. I'm not spending 15 euro for a tape! LOL!
Steal them for the DVD!
I appreciate you shared your thought with the rest of us and not left it to a private message. We need as many thoughts as possible here!
I can agree with your line of thought.
To be sure if this is a cut specifically designed for Italy or it has been distribuited like this also in other European countries we should check the old French version of the movie, they also dub foreign films and first released this in 1971 (on the contrary of Germany where it was only released on 1978, according to IMDb).
What's the Skywalking blurb?
Kenobius Prime said:
I went to the store with a smile when I heard about the DVD
Yeah we were all in for a big surprise when we went to buy the DVD. I ordered it online as soon as it was available, having no idea that films could be altered years later. Sigh
Yes it was probably 85 and they wrote 95. I doubt such long version ever existed.
ChainsawAsh said:
What the hell is this 95-minute, X-rated version released in the UK in 1971? Could that have included trailers or something?
Maybe they cut away some old-fashioned porn scenes lol
Lucas, old perv!
Boy that's confusing, we've only got restrictions by age, usually 14 and 18 (and X for porn), that's it! No indication on the content of the film (at least at the cinema, on DVD covers they might me more specific).
In Italy we can watch Eyes Wide Shut since 14 years old while in the UK they have to wait till they're 18.
THX is set to 14 in Italy and 15 in the UK. Instead, Finnish kids can watch LUH's "nudities" since 11 years old.
That stuff on ebay is really expensive! I wonder what's the story behind it, how they retrieved such rare photographs (one of the sellers is from Germany so they must have travelled a bit).
I'm still hoping to find some friend who, by chance, has THX on VHS because on Ebay Italy people have stopped selling VHS and if they do they cost a small fortune. The only other option is to phone up a far-away-up-in-the-north public library, ask them to play the tape for me and tell me what's the beginning of the film like!
A very uncomfortable thing to ask over the phone to some unknown librarian.
Anyway I keep my hopes up. From what I can understand we're not in any particular hurry, I trust that I will eventually find a VHS of this film (so allowing us to have a better quality version and finally confirm if the film was released in Italy with the flashback or not).
SilverWook said:
It's a little disheartening I can see more fine detail in what erri_wan sent me.
What other small differences did you notice from the Italian version Silver?
Not yet